POLITICS-INDIA: Gun Scandal Back to Haunt Gandhis Ahead of Poll

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 14 2004 (IPS) - Allegations of bribery in a deal to buy Swedish artillery peaked all of 18 years ago, but continue to threaten the fortunes of India’s opposition Congress Party and that of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty in the current election season.

Congress Party leaders are now questioning the timing of devastating statements made by a Swedish investigator, Sten Lindstrom, and published on Apr. 8 by the ‘Asian Age’ newspaper as its main lead, two weeks before India is set to go into the first phase of a staggered four-stage elections on Apr. 20.

In the statement, Lindstrom – who was tasked with investigating the howitzer deal for 18 years – suggested that Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress Party and heir to the Nehru-Gandhi political mantle, be questioned on who exactly benefited from alleged kickbacks in the 1.2 billion U.S. dollar deal.

Lindstrom’s statement has thrown the Congress Party into disarray. Already, the party is busy fending off a political campaign against Sonia Gandhi’s possible candidature for the prime minister’s job, on the grounds that the Italian-born politician is of foreign birth.

Said an exasperated Gandhi at a weekend political rally: ”The timing of this (Bofors issue) being brought up again speaks for itself. This bogey of Bofors has been raised for the last 18 years – it was thrust on my husband (Rajiv Gandhi), now on me very conveniently and God knows one day on my great grandchildren.”

Gandhi also accused the ruling and right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of raking up the Bofors issue to cover up for the ”inability of the (Prime Minister Atal Bihari) Vajpayee government to solve the real problems facing the country”.

The issue first surfaced in 1987 when Swedish Radio revealed that the then ailing Bofors company had paid bribes to unnamed Indian figures to secure the deal. It seemed there was nothing Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister, could do to avoid making the charges stick.

Gandhi was known to have favoured the funding of the Congress Party through commissions on arms and other government purchases rather through the usual method of collecting money from businessmen in return for licences that ensured monopolies in India’s large and protected markets.

Over time, such protectionism given to Indian businessmen and industrialists became responsible for a steady deterioration in the quality of goods that they brazenly released in the Indian markets.

On example was the clunky Ambassador car, originally designed in the early 50s, but which was allowed to have a near monopoly of the Indian car market for four decades until India was compelled to embark on a programme of economic reforms by the World Bank.

Whatever Rajiv Gandhi’s intentions were, the massive scandal raised over the Bofors deal cost him and the Congress Party the 1989 general elections and the political pre-eminence it has enjoyed through most of its 115-year-old history.

Out of power, Gandhi declared that he was ready to come clean on the whole deal and also rid the Congress Party of ”power brokers’. But he was assassinated at an election rally in 1991.

Curiously, the Swedish prime minister the time of the Bofors deal, Olaf Palme, was also assassinated, leading to the widespread speculation that both leaders had fallen victim to ruthless players in the international arms bazaar.

The Bofors curse was later to touch Prime Minister Tony Blair when the British press linked him to one of the alleged agents of the howitzer deal, the London-based Indian arms dealer family of the Hindujas.

Blair’s cabinet colleague Peter Mandelson was forced to resign in January 2001 following allegations that he had helped one of the Hinduja brothers to gain British citizenship out of turn.

Although logically, the Bofors scandal in India should have ended with Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, the case has dragged on interminably with each twist and turn either helping or harming the Congress Party.

It was just on Feb. 3 this year that the Delhi High Court finally absolved Rajiv Gandhi of personal involvement in the deal – in what is regarded as a most important political verdict since his widow is to lead the Congress Party into the April/May elections.

But the celebrations were to be short-lived. The month’s statements by the Swedish investigator Sten Lindstrom have brought the Congress Party back to square one.

This especially because Lindstrom has named Ottavio Qattrochi, an Italian businessman and close friend of the Gandhi family, as one of the recipients of the Bofors kickbacks.

There are now calls from top BJP leaders that Sonia Gandhi be taken in for questioning by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country’s premier sleuthing agency.

So far, the bureau has made no move to question her and Ram Jethmalani, an eminent lawyer who served as law minister in the Vajpayee cabinet, has described the episode as a clear gimmick designed to damage the Congress Party and its leader.

”Now that the foreign origin (of Sonia Gandhi) has failed to make an impression on voters, they are raking up the Bofors issue again,” Jethmalani, who has always been a vocal critic of the Congress Party, told reporters last week.

”There is no basis on which Sonia Gandhi can be questioned by the CBI as she was not even a public servant at the time the Bofors deal was concluded,” he said. They (the BJP) are just trying to pin her down before the elections.”